Adam’s Peace

Note: This is part 3 of a 4 part series, not including the introduction and conclusion. The introduction is titled Peaceful Virtues, and has links to the rest of the articles in the series.

A manager went to his programmers and told them: “As regards to your work hours: you are going to have to come in at nine in the morning and leave at five in the afternoon.” At this, all of them became angry and several resigned on the spot.

So the manager said: “All right, in that case you may set your own working hours, as long as you finish your projects on schedule.” The programmers, now satisfied, began to come in at noon and work to the wee hours of the morning.

– The Tao of Programming

This virtue is the key to finding peace within the objective reality of right now.

One thing that must be understood, though, is that the past does not exist anymore. It used to, certainly, but it evolved into the present. All of the parts that made up the past were recycled and now make up the present… Not one bit of the past still exists.

This is a stretch, I know. Certainly we can find fossils in the ground, or even see notes we wrote on a slip of paper two minutes ago… Yet, the truth is that those fossils exist right now, as do the notes. They might have also existed in the past, but they only exist right now.

Originally, I wanted to start this post off by jumping right into Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, so that I could explain how everything exists only right now. I’ll still cover that topic, but I’m going to use that material as a post script, including it only in the comments section, because it is a really distant tangent, even for me.

Suffice it to say, Relativity only seems to say that time is an extra dimension, but actually says that the only time that exists is right now. For those who want to know more, read on to the comments.

Instead, I’ll explain what we can do with right now, and why awareness is important.

Momentum

Everything is in motion. We all know that the Earth revolves around the Sun, and that the Sun moves throughout the galaxy. Our galaxy also moves around, relative to all of the other galaxies in our universe. The only constant is motion… And, everything that is in motion tends to stay in motion.

While standing on the surface of the Earth, we tend to see a lot of things standing still… In fact, it is very useful to believe that most things are standing still. After all, a map that describes the territory completely and accurately is no better of a map than the territory itself, so believing that a tall building isn’t moving is very useful to simplify things. Just remember, if you’re trying to move a mountain, it is already moving by itself.

How do we control where a car moves to? We simply change its path of least resistance by turning its wheels. Momentum does the rest. How do we walk? We simply fall forward, keep our feet under us, and momentum does the rest. For the vast majority of movements we want to make, the easiest way to make a change is to change the path of least resistance.

Awareness

Our awareness only exists within the great span of time we call Now. Fortunately, objective reality only exists within Now as well, so we can be aware of objective reality. We can change it, push it, pull it, or if we want to, we can ignore it.

The primary purpose of awareness is to give us a space where we can make decisions. Awareness, however, is firmly planted within our subjective world… All of the information about our world comes through our senses, gets filtered, and only if our senses deem something as important, or if we decide to be aware of our senses, will that information be noticed by our awareness. Our awareness also drifts into our memories and into our imagination, allowing us to compare information from the past and plan for things in the future. While we are remembering, we are not planning, nor are we aware of our senses. While we are aware of our sense, we are not remembering, nor are we planning. And, to be complete, while we are planning, we are neither aware of our senses or remembering. Our consciousness drifts between these three states, giving our memories, our imagination, and our senses instructions that they carry out largely automatically.

While I’m writing this, I use my imagination to plan out a phrase. I then compare that phrase to my memory, figuring out individual words and letters. I then give those words and letters to my motor-neurons, telling them to type it out. While I’m typing, I’m starting the sequence over again, imagining my next phrase, or using my memory to compare what I’ve written, what I intend to write, and my experiences to make certain that they all match. My motor-neurons are happily telling my fingers, hands, and arms what moves to make, and I’m completely unconscious of the individual letters as they’re being typed on the screen, blissfully unaware of the hundreds of minute muscle movements required to move my fingers from one key to the next.

From time to time, I run out of phrases to type, and I have to be more conscious of my imagination. All too often, I can’t find the right word, and I have to search my memory for a word that fits. As each of these problems show up, my muscles run out of instructions, and I stop typing, but I don’t notice that I’ve stopped until it is time to start typing again, when I give my body instructions to move. This arrangement allows me to multi-task. Instead of having to come up with a long series of phrases, then find the right words, then tell my muscles which letters to type, I set my imagination to a task, set my memory to another task, and set my muscles to the third task, and they all get accomplished at the same time, with the minimum amount of awareness.

This is the key of what awareness is, and how we are conscious. Our awareness makes decisions about what to think of next, and then leaves the scene until any one part of the brain either runs out of instructions or gets stuck in processing information.

Our awareness sets our thoughts in motion, and then lets the momentum of our thoughts complete the tasks.

How Being More Aware Helps Us

Our motor-neurons are great at telling our muscles how to repeat a task… This is often called muscle memory, and anybody who types more than ten words per minute knows how that this works. We don’t have to tell our fingers how to press the correct key anymore, we only think of the key we want to press, and for the more experienced, we simply think of the letter, or even the whole word. Walking works the same way… We don’t have to keep track of which foot is in front, and how far extended each leg is… The whole of our conscious thought is usually where we want to be in a few seconds, and our motor-neurons take care of the rest automatically.

The problem with this is that practice doesn’t make perfect, it makes habit. If we practice typing with our pinkies only, then we’ll get extremely good at typing only with our pinkies, able to do it without being consciously aware of how we do it. Consciousness can, if we so choose, override the muscle memory and we would be able to type with our whole hands, but while our awareness was concentrating on where to place each finger, we would be unable to use our memories or imagination to plan our next sentence, slowing us down considerably.

Consciousness, then, is not only a tool to put the rest of our brain to work, but to notice and correct our mistakes. It takes a lot of work to correct a mistake, compared to doing something automatically. Being more aware helps us in two ways:

First, being aware as much as possible right now helps us to find mistakes early, before they become habits.

Second, awareness is a mental muscle, just like willpower is a mental muscle… An untrained brain can only be aware for short periods of time, but as we practice and train our awareness, it gains more endurance, allowing us to become more and more aware as time goes on.

This second point feeds back into the first point… The more aware we are, the more we catch mistakes and prevent them from becoming habits.

Training Your Awareness

Unfortunately, I can’t help very much here. The best thing to do is practice being aware. This part really does depend on each person’s own motivations, time management techniques, and existing habits.

I can say, though, that what works best for me is to have reminders for tasks that I want to work on. This jolts me out of the task at hand, bringing my awareness out of both my imagination and memory, and fully into the current situation. I have my personal data accessory sound an alarm at 7pm every night, reminding me to clean out the litter box, and I find that it works wonderfully at not only reminding me of that one task, but of making me aware of my environment.

I’m seriously considering setting a new reminder at a different time, directly reminding me to be conscious. This way, it doesn’t matter what task I may be reminded of, I’ll run through my plans for the day, look at what tasks I may be procrastinating, and search my environment for tasks that I hadn’t thought of previously.

Awareness Working With Momentum

When we’re not being fully aware, we’re running on pure momentum down the path of least resistance. I’m sure a lot of people know just how bad this can be, and is the common thread behind dead-end jobs, relationships with poor communication, and a generally unimpressive life.

When we are being fully aware, we’re also running on pure momentum down the path of least resistance. Yes, read that again. If you missed it, I just said that we run on pure momentum down the path of least resistance both when we’re fully aware and when we’re unaware. The difference, though, is that you are the one who chooses the path of least resistance, so that your path leads to your goals, dreams, and aspirations.

The road between takes work, and to know how to find the path that you want first requires that you’re honest with yourself, and that you are honest with what you want. Finding your best path also requires that you’re honest with your past and with your feelings, understanding where momentum up until now has taken you, and just how far you need to turn. Of course, dealing with your past requires honest acceptance and forgiveness. As we continue this series, come Monday, we’ll discuss how to decide on the path that you want to take.

Conclusion

If we used an analogy of a road trip to describe this series of posts, first, we described how to select the best map, simply by being Honest. We also described how to read the map, through Acceptance and Forgiveness. Now, with this post on Awareness, we have learned how to drive. Staying with this analogy, our next post will tell us how to pick the best roads from those on the map, by having Responsibility.

Link Love

Probably one of my favorites of Steve Pavlina’s recent posts (before he went on a play-by-play description of his latest 30 day experiment, becoming a “raw” vegetarian) is his thought provoking article asking what the Middle Path is.

For those unfamiliar with the Middle Path, the Buddha encouraged people to avoid extremes… instead of seeking more and more wealth to feed the ego, or perhaps giving up everything (and again feeding the ego), simply live your life within your means and abilities.

While I’m not quite certain where Steve was really going with his post, he certainly sparked conversation on his forums. Give his questions a read, then read the conversation that follows.

Reader Question

This question is simple:

What do you think?

p.s., I added a new spam-fighting plugin to my site this morning. If you have trouble posting a comment, please notify me using either my private email (if you have it) or via the contact form. Javascript and cookies must be enabled to leave a comment.

Note: This is part 2 of a 4 part series, not including the introduction and conclusion. The introduction is titled Peaceful Virtues, and has links to the rest of the articles in the series.

Does a good farmer neglect a crop he has planted?
Does a good teacher overlook even the most humble student?
Does a good father allow a single child to starve?
Does a good programmer refuse to maintain his code?

– The Tao of Programming

Acceptance and Forgiveness are the virtues needed to find peace within our own subjective world.

Before going further, though, I do want to make a distinction. When many people see the phrase ‘forgive everyone,’ they think that it includes the people who have hurt you the most and who remain unrepentant.

Well, that’s exactly what I mean. Forgive the worst people around you as much as you forgive the best intentioned.

I am not saying that you should turn around and let them continue hurting you. Forgiveness and forgetfulness are separate concepts, even though they seem to go hand-in-hand. Forgiveness is a form of acceptance… I would like to describe what acceptance is, and how it leads to peace.

Defining the Virtues

Acceptance comes from the root word accept, meaning to receive. (Please don’t confuse accept with except… An exception is something unusual, and to except something means to separate it from a group.) The complement to accepting something is to give it, where we find the root for forgive. Of course, the beginning of forgive, for, signifies that we give first, or before.

Acceptance is the state of always receiving. Forgiveness is the state of always giving first.

[edit: I was wrong, sort of. See Jeff’s comment below]

Forgiveness First

All of evolution rests upon the principle of continuing the species. For some animals, that means looking out for yourself, and only yourself, until you are able to breed. Examples of these would be various spiders, fish, amphibians, insects, etc. These creatures tend to have a large number of young over very short periods of time, and among the carnivorous, cannibalism is common. They would be described as being independent The next group of creatures, which includes most mammals, as well as some spiders, fish, amphibians, insects, and most birds, have evolved to nurture their young until they become competition. These species often have smaller numbers of young, rarely travel in groups, and cannibalism is rare, but not completely unheard of. They are also usually described as being independent. A third group, composed entirely of insects, cares for every member of their family, with only one breeder (often called the queen). They are described as being co-dependent.

The final group is made up of creatures that have formed a community, yet each member still remains an individual, trying to breed and survive while remaining in the group. Examples are wolves, meerkats, lions, elephants, humans, and generally most large mammals, although some birds fall under this category as well. Their best description is being interdependent. These social animals all have one rule in common: To receive, you must also give.

What does this have to do with our own inner minds and subjective realities?

Well, among any animals we’ve studied, humans are perhaps the most social. There are species of monkeys that have thousand member clans, but outside of human society, it is extremely rare to find a united social group that has over 50 members. Humans, on the other hand, have millions of people living in different cities… There are nations with billions of residents, each person identifying themselves as a part of the whole.

Maps, Territories… What’s the Difference?

I think that our ability to have such large social groups is what allowed humans to use technology.

The English language doesn’t have a phrase for what I want to describe… Instead, I’ll use a psychological trick involving visualization.

Take five seconds to think of a block of wood.

Now, without trying to imagine a new block of wood, only remembering what you had imagined during those five seconds, answer these questions:

What color was it?
How much did it weigh?
What shape was it?
Was it rough, sanded, or splintered?
Was it thin grained or thick grained?

Here are my answers. For those five seconds, I had a clear block of wood that didn’t have any weight. It had the proportions of 1×2x4, was not splintered, but there was no texture to it, and it was thick grained.

While thinking about the questions, of course I tried to come up with answers that matched most blocks of wood… My first thought about color was that it was light brown… but when I first visualized it, I wasn’t thinking about color at all… Color simply didn’t matter.

It seemed that what did matter to me was that the block of wood had a rectangular, blocky shape, and it had a wood grain. If I thought to ask about a stick, then I would have imagined a small branch with dark brown bark and one natural bend… but I would not have thought of a grain, length, or weight.

In fact, throughout that entire visualization exercise, I never thought about the smell, taste, our sound of the wood… A lot of information was left out… yet I know that I thought of a block of wood.

This is how our memories are organized… We store the fewest details possible to identify something as unique, and we’re almost always wrong about those details. If you think back to your dinner last night, can you remember noticing the design on your plate? Can you remember how your plate was oriented?

Of course, these details are useless in our day to day life, so we don’t even want to remember them… Yet, it leads me to believe that our minds are extremely storage efficient; we can’t simply think of a block of wood and instantly get all of the information we need… We have to dig into the wood with all of our senses before we have a complete visualization.

And, we do the same thing with other people. Inside of our own memories, each person is identified by their most unique traits. I’m certain that I’m identified by many readers by how I meander through topics, take short tangents, and write monolithic posts. (Trust me, today’s meandering through topics is well worth it… I have a clear goal and a path to get there.)

Just as we have a ‘generic’ block of wood in our minds, we also have a ‘generic’ person in our minds. This generic person has all of the rules that we think people will follow… It is our model from which we build all other people in our minds. Unfortunately, if we found someone who exactly matched this generic model, we would quickly forget them.

We identify specific blocks of wood by putting unique labels on top of our generic block. If I wanted to remember my dad’s workbench, which was made up of three 8 inch by 12 inch by 4 foot logs that had been squared off, then I would assign labels of size, weight, color, grain, smell, texture, and the fact that it was always cluttered with tools. There isn’t enough detail for me to draw the bench from memory… but I could compare it to any other bench and identify it uniquely.

We do the same thing with people. Besides putting an appearance on our generic idea of a person, we also put personality quirks, voice, and long time behaviors on top to make a doll in our own minds of who that person is. Anything that we don’t know about that person remains generic… it gets inherited from our idea of a generic person. If we believe that most people are Jehovah-fearing Christians, then you’ll label your generic model of people as Christian. Only when someone doesn’t match your ideas of the generic Christian will you question your ideas and put a special label on your mental doll.

Taking Care of Your Generic Model

Our generic model of people comes from a combination of the most common traits that different people have. Fortunately, we don’t have to decide what is most common and what makes a person unique… Our dreams do that for us automatically.

Unfortunately, however, if we know a lot of people who we don’t like, our generic model of people will start taking on those same traits. By far, the vast majority of people want to be good. The problem, though, is that these people will match your expectations unconsciously… I personally guarantee that I’ll be the person you expect me to be.

This means that people will unconsciously fit within your generic model. It does create a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, but it also gives us a lot of subjective control over our environment. (Think about the Law of Attraction… This is where that partial theory of subjective power really comes from.)

If we change our subjective generic model, we change our expectations of how people would behave. As our expectations of people change, they subconsciously pick up on those new expectations and start acting accordingly. As people’s behaviors change, it changes our subjective generic model… It becomes a feedback loop that gets easier to maintain over time.

Starting a New Loop

How, then, do we jump-start the process of changing our expectations and our generic models?

Well, the same things that work on people in the “real” world also works within our subjective models. Humans are social creatures, which means that we respond very favorably to gifts of any sort… from money to cars to food, and even (especially) simply expressing your appreciation.

We can’t give gifts to our generic model directly… It is nothing more than a shadow and a script of default behaviors. There would be no point, because our generic model resides purely inside of our subconscious minds, and the best that our conscious mind can do is catch short glimpses here and there.

Instead, we can give gifts to the dolls that flesh out our generic model… We can give directly to our memories of people.

To find out what gifts would be most appropriate, we simply have to look at what we ourselves want. Remember, these imaginary dolls are a part of ourselves, and while they’re based on other people, they also respond the same way we would respond, if we were in their situation.

I know that if I ever hurt someone, guilt would eat me up… I would have two choices, either to ignore the guilt and justify my actions, or to seek to ease their suffering. If I saw that a person wasn’t willing to accept my apologies and gifts of penance, then I would ignore the guilt and patch up my ego as best as I could. This is actually how I see other people reacting to me as well… The best thing that I could do to someone who hurt me is to give them a gift of accepting their apologies and penance… of appreciating their concern.

Now, I don’t know if the real person would be willing to admit guilt or not until I’ve tried to accept their apologies… Perhaps they’ve sheltered their egos from harm so much that they’re incapable of understanding that they’ve hurt someone. That isn’t my problem yet, though. My problem is that my mental image of them is hurting how I view other people. If a person is being carried away by a raging river, I can’t help them if I’m stuck in the same river… In that situation, the best I could do for them would be to let them use my body as a flotation device… and then, I’d only be able to help one person once. If, instead of jumping in the river to save them, I brought a boat with plenty of line, then I could continue to save people until I ran out of room… then I’d only have to return to shore before venturing back to the river to save more.

Along those same lines, I can not ease the suffering of someone else’s ego if my ego is suffering… At best, I could only let them step on me and exhaust my ego’s usefulness. If, instead, I put my ego into somewhere safe (until my ego no longer causes any suffering… which is still years away), then I can go in and ease other people’s suffering as much as I want.

So, if I’m to help anybody, I have to be on a firm foundation and be the first to throw out the rope… I must give first, or forgive by appreciating their desire to ease my suffering… even if they have not yet shown that desire.

This is the key to starting a new feedback loop to change our expectations of others… We must be the first to give them a gift, even if they aren’t offering one in exchange.

Often, with people who have a heavily defended ego, it would be viewed as an assault to forgive them directly. Instead, sit down in visualization/meditation/prayer with their subjective doll and have that doll apologize. Return that gift of kindness by honestly accepting that apology, then treat the real person as though they had apologized in real life. More often than not, you’ll find another apology following from the person themselves.

disclaimer: If the person is a threat to your health and safety, avoid them, no matter how much their subjective doll has apologized and how honestly you have accepted them. I am not advocating you putting your life in danger. Use your best judgment and if you have realistic doubts, keep this as a mental exercise. Still forgive the person subjectively, because that will vastly improve your relationships with everybody else, but don’t put yourself into danger unnecessarily.

Staying in the New Rut

Forgiveness is wonderful for getting out of your old rut. Remember, though, that forgiveness is simply the first time that you accept and appreciate a gift from another person. The important thing to recognize, though, is that a rut exists simply because it is the most traveled portion of a road… Depending on the road, a rut can make travel easier or make it harder. Ruts in stone roads can smooth out the bumps, but ruts in dirt roads collect water, making the wheels eventually grind to a halt in the mud.

Forgiveness gets you out of the rut in the dirt road, but unless we find a different road made out of stone, then the moment we relax, we’ll find that we are back in the rut.

Acceptance is the stone road of the analogy. Acceptance is receiving everything into our lives as though they were gifts. If we accepted gifts all day, every day, wouldn’t we be very happy indeed?

It takes practice to recognize things as gifts, and some things take a wild stretch of the imagination to see as a gift. Personally, I can only see a silver lining in my hip going bad at a young age… the rest is a giant storm cloud for me right now. This is one area of my life where I recognize that I need to find more peace and acceptance.

The question is, how do we accept a gift?

Do we open the wrapping, thank the giver, then place the box in a closet? Does that really show that we accepted the gift?

How about if we took the gift, thanked the giver, and placed it in the trash? At least we’re not lying to ourselves like we would be doing if we placed the gift in a closet and never used it.

The way to accept any gift is to use it. If you’re given a sweater around December 25th, then you haven’t truly accepted the sweater until you have used it. At least take it out of the box and hold it for a moment. (I promise, I won’t be giving anyone any sweaters at the end of this year, even if they do have reindeer and snowmen woven in. Everyone can breath a sigh of relief now.)

How to Use Our Gifts

It may seem silly for me to have a section devoted simply to using gifts… Please bear with me, I do have a point coming up.

How do you use any object?

You simply pick it up and use it, right?

For large objects, picking it up might be inappropriate… A car, for instance, would be very difficult to lift. In this case, “picking up” the car would be getting inside and turning it on. Using it would be driving it to your destination.

What a lot of people forget, though, is that once they’re done using something, they set it back down. When you’re done with dinner, you put your fork down. When you have reached your destination, you turn your car off and get out. When you have used your remote control to change the channel, it gets placed on the couch so that it can slide between the cushions.

Our memories and emotions are gifts too. They must be used in order to accept them. If we don’t accept them, then we’re violating the first virtue, Honesty, and we drift away from reality. Even the most painful memories exist as gifts, and their purpose is to bring us closer to reality.

How do we use them, then?

Well, first, we pick them up. We search our memories for something that might be bothering us, or look for emotions that might be raw, and we pick one. Often, our subconscious mind will very quickly volunteer an event or emotion for us to work with.

Next, we remember what happened… Exactly what happened, not what we would have liked to have happen. If there were emotions involved, then we feel those emotions. If we have visualizations attached to those feelings, then we see those visualizations.

The last and most often overlooked step is to let go. Once we are done with that memory, we thank it and put it back in place… just as we are grateful to our forks so that our hands don’t get dirty while eating, or we’re thankful for our cars so that we can travel quickly. We don’t have to sub-vocalize a statement of thanks… simply appreciate that you had the opportunity to study it, and then let it go.

Just like you wouldn’t carry the fork you used for dinner around until you went to bed, you shouldn’t carry your memories and feelings around in your conscious mind until a new memory comes up. It is either the reluctance to pick up or the reluctance to let go of our feelings that keep us from accepting our own thoughts honestly and living within reality.

The feelings will still be there, if we want them again. When we let them go, we aren’t dropping them in the trash, they go into the care of our subconscious, which then re-examines the feelings and files them away. If we have memories that are somehow important, our subconscious will bring them up… We simply have to pick them up, remember/feel fully, and then give it back to our subconscious. If we missed something, then when our subconscious goes through its sorting routine, it will notice and give us back that memory. Fortunately, it will be easier to use that memory/feeling the next time it comes up, until we don’t have to worry about it any more.

Letting go is just as easy as setting a paper on our desk and walking away. The night crew (our subconscious) will file the paper appropriately, and let us know if we have more work to do in the morning.

Just as people appreciate having gifts accepted graciously, our own subconscious appreciates this as well. The more that you accept from your memories and feelings, the better the quality those memories and feelings will be.

Link Love

Just in case anybody was wondering, I do have a purpose for placing the Link Love section above the Reader Question section. This is so that there is always a little more interest in continuing to read, and because of this, people will read through the link love, hopefully find the presented site interesting, and when they’re done answering the question, will remember the last thing they read. In this case, it is presenting Adam Karemer’s site, JoyChaser.com, and highlighting his article How My Laptop Is Helping Me Lose Weight. It gives a useful tip in multitasking: Do something that commits you to doing something else.

In Adam’s case, he walks to his local coffee shop so that he can write his posts in a comfortable setting. This also forces him to walk back as well, pushing him further than if he had simply went out to walk around his neighborhood until he got tired. He starts with a goal in mind, and because he is looking for ways to group different activities, he ends up achieving two goals at the same time.

Reader Question

I have to admit, I’m tempted to ask who you would have the hardest time forgiving. That’s not a fair question, though, because there are a lot of defenses built up around the ego that prevent that question from being answered, and it isn’t my goal to destroy the defenses of the ego, but to lower them one layer at a time, at a comfortable pace. Also, there are some people who have been forgiving others for a very long time, and it’s not fair to give them such an easy question.

Instead… I’ve presented my analogy for human consciousness as a model that computers can host, both with the right hardware and software. Everybody has analogies, models, and symbols that help them understand topics better… What is your analogy for consciousness, what are its symbols, and what type of model best describes it?

For those who don’t care to look back in my archive, here is my model of consciousness once again:

Analogy: Computers

Symbols: Database arrays for long-term memory; “hashed” numbers for compressed ideas (immediate thoughts aren’t the actual experiences); processors for individual collections of neurons; sensors, keyboards, cameras for the different senses.

Model: It is a computer system made up of a lot of generic processors… different computers all built the same way. Each processor has different software running it, performing tasks such as taking in information directly (i.e., from the cameras, temperature sensors, keyboards, etc… the system’s senses), organizing and filtering the information, and either making decisions (the main consciousness), or sorting the information for future use (the sub-consciousness).

A novice programmer was once assigned to code a simple financial package.

The novice worked furiously for many days, but when his master reviewed his program, he discovered that it contained a screen editor, a set of generalized graphics routines, an artificial intelligence interface, but not the slightest mention of anything financial.

When the master asked about this, the novice became indignant. “Don’t be so impatient,” he said, “I’ll put in the financial stuff eventually.”

– The Tao of Programming

A lot of work can be done without a purpose, but what does that work accomplish?

I’m very guilty of this, even after finding a purpose to my life. Before I found a purpose, though, I simply did not have any direction… I went wherever my circumstances took me, not choosing to steer my own life in any one direction. After I found a purpose, I have found that making goals and plans comes much more easily, and it is also much easier to stick with those plans.

Having a purpose also gives me a benchmark for when to cut out old goals and plans, and compare society’s definition of success against my own definition.

There are several ways to find a purpose, but I’ll just be sharing the way that I used to find my own. Some people have reported using this method successfully in under 30 minutes, while others have had to spend a few hour-long sessions using this method before finding a purpose. I used this method for two 15 minute sessions, then one 30 minute session before I defined my purpose as “To bring peace to everybody.”

How to Find Your Purpose

This method is actually very simple… Find a place where you can write undisturbed, then write down as many ideas for a purpose as you can, one on each line. If you’re doing this on paper, bring plenty of sheets.

The way that you’ll know if you found a purpose is you will start crying after or while writing it down.

Don’t be afraid to write down things that you absolutely know are not going to be your purpose… Often, if we try to ignore an idea, it will keep popping up until we have dealt with it, distracting us from finding an idea that is closer to our purpose.

Also, it helps to write down different variations of your ideas, to sort of create a gauge of where you need to go. If one idea feels good, but doesn’t make you cry, then narrow the scope down, or broaden it, or even apply it to different groups of people entirely and see how you feel about that.

Finally (on the subject of finding a purpose), please keep in mind that my purpose is extremely short. Most purposes that I’ve seen other people come up with are very detailed, two to three sentence specific purposes… By comparison, mine is extremely broad, vague, and open-ended… I’ll never fully accomplish my purpose, whereas most other purposes can be accomplished and maintained.

Living Your Purpose

Now we get into the sticky part of the process… When I first found my purpose, I reworked this site, cleaned out my life, and devoted a lot of my time to finding out more about peace.

What I failed to do, though, was to set aside any firm goals and create any plans necessary to reach those goals. My purpose is broad; I want to reach everybody and let them know that peace is both possible and desirable.

Of course, I’m not naive enough to think that I can personally talk to everybody in the world… Neither do I think that everybody will want to listen to what I have to say even if I could talk to them all. From the moment I decided on my purpose, I realized that it was doomed to failure.

Because of this perspective, I modified my primary goal. I understand the principles of a ‘viral’ idea… That is, one person has an idea, shares it with one or two other people, and if those people like this idea, they’ll share it with one or two other people as well. Eventually, the idea will spread across the world. With this in mind, I planned to find a small group of people who would listen to my ideas, and I set out to find peace in my own life, so that I could share what I’ve learned.

Unfortunately, after reaching this beginning goal, I stopped trying to push harder, finding more people who I could spread a message of peace to. RSS subscribers slowly trickled in as word-of-mouth spread, and I’ve seen the people who visit this site touching on the topic of peace on their own sites. What I really need, though, is to reach a ‘critical mass,’ where I can reach enough people each year that they’ll turn around and copy me, inspiring still others to copy them.

I don’t think that I can do this only with a blog. I’m brainstorming ideas for future additions to this site, and I’ll welcome ideas from others as well… Perhaps a bulletin system where people can mention peace-related activities in different areas, or a forum… Peace isn’t only about me, it’s about everyone.

The key to living a purpose, no matter how broad or specific, is to make attainable goals, plans to reach those goals, and to take time regularly (perhaps each month) to review those goals and revise the plans.

Friday’s 30 Day Trial Updates

I have stopped my 30 day trial on waking up early due to health concerns. This past week, I’ve been getting constant headaches, and the only recent change in my environment has been waking up at 4am. I’m not completely certain that the headaches are caused by waking up early, so I decided to take a week off and return to waking at 5:30am, and if the headaches disappear, then I’ll experiment more to see what my threshold is. I made it three whole weeks with waking at 4am, though, which is a wonderful testament to myself that I have the willpower necessary to make other changes. My willpower didn’t fail, it was simply concerns over my health.

After waking up at 5:30 this morning, however, I am happy to report that I don’t have a headache today.

I have started two more 30 day trials though. I discussed my financial planning previously (which will take a bit longer than only 30 days to find any real results), and I am also starting an exercise routine.

My finances are largely unchanged, although this pay period will have more surplus than last pay period, allowing me to create a buffer zone as I anticipate an “extra” paycheck in April, due to the number of ‘pay months’ (two two-week pay periods) and calendar months being different throughout the year. While I don’t expect any large results until this extra paycheck in April, I still plan on setting as high of an emergency savings as I can, both before and after April.

Also, despite wanting to have a more active role in dolling out our money, my wife went ahead and paid our bills that were coming due these next two weeks without me being there… I suppose it’s not appropriate to ask someone else to break a habit only for your benefit.

As for the exercise routine, my current plan is to spend time lifting weights on every odd day, and ride an exercise bicycle every even day. Currently, I’ve set aside a block of time about 45 minutes after I eat dinner to do my exercising, which is the ideal time to build strength (as opposed to exercising before eating breakfast in the morning, which is the ideal time to lose weight). Yesterday, I was surprised by just how out-of-shape I had become since leaving the Army… I did a full body workout, and did one set of each exercise for each muscle group, until I neared muscle failure. (Just starting out, I don’t want to reach muscle failure, because that can cause a lot of damage to untrained muscles.)

My arms lost the most relative strength in the four years since I last exercised regularly… I used to be able to do around 75 push-ups in under 2 minutes. Now, I’m quite certain that I can do around 20 in the same amount of time, if I fall over in exhaustion immediately afterwards. My abdominal muscles have shown deterioration as well… I used to do over 85 sit-ups in under 2 minutes, which is considered very fast. My speed isn’t what I was most concerned about, though… I used to be able to do sit-ups indefinitely, sometimes doing over 300 repetitions before getting bored. Now, I can do 35 before the burn gets too great to continue.

I’m certain that the speed of my legs has decreased, although with my bad hip, I won’t be testing how fast I can run. Just as with my abs, I’m more concerned with the endurance of my legs. I can walk continuously for eight hours, with the limit being my hip, but when I get on the bicycle tonight, we’ll see just how much my legs have deteriorated. At my fastest, I used to run 2 miles in just over 12 minutes, although I would be happy to travel that same distance in under 20 minutes now.

Question of the Day

Well, there really isn’t a question for today… Rather, an open-ended invitation to share your experiences with this method of finding your purpose, or perhaps a different method of finding a purpose, and if you already have one, feel free to share the purpose you’ve selected previously.